Turtle Light

Hey all; Okay I have this electric vehicle that I drive (it's a company golf cart)
The golf cart that I drive around usually has a full charge that is kept on the charger over-night.
When I am driving it around during the day, before the end of my shift; usually the golf cart has a turtle light that comes on the LCD panel screen. What happens with the turtle light is that the complete system goes into low speed mode, it's barley driveable but just enough to make it to the charger.
My question is, my company has already replaced two batteries and it was running fine for a little while. Then all of a sudden the turtle light mode would come back on and the same procedure would happen (slow mode).

Does anyone know what the turtle light symbol actually represents???
Or does it simply mean slow mode? The turtle light will happen after one bar line disappears (battery indicator symbol)
Also what else could be making the turtle light symbol come on again?

Hi David, well I have a set of a full battery indicator symbol that is on my LCD panel display.

So basically there are a set of lines from left= red (which means no charge/no juice)
all the way to the right= green lines (to the full)
I can keep an eye on that indicator symbol, to see how much juice is actually left before I feel comfortable enough to put the golf cart back on the charger.
(I am not sure if you have seen one of those or if you have one on your Lectra) basically it's an actual battery picture on my LCD.
If not, on monday I will take a picture and upload it. Anyway....
When one green (or two) lines disappear, that is when the turtle light comes on and then slow mode happens,
it's really quite frustrating because it has sat on the charger the whole evening.

I am trying to find out what else could be causing the slow mode to happen, especially if two batteries have already been replaced.
Our company has a mobile "fix it" service, so we may have to go with them, again.

Sounds like a battery issue to me. This happened before, replacing two batteries made it ok for awhile, now the problem has returned, right?

How many batteries are in the cart, and what type are they (flooded, AGM, etc)?

If the two that were replaced were car-starting batteries, they are designed to supply lots of current, but only for a short time. You should have deep-cycle batteries in an electric vehicle.

From a full charge, I'd check and record the resting voltage of each individual battery. Then apply a known load for a given period of time and note the voltage drop. Repeat the same test on each battery. You may find one or more drop much quicker than the others. And they may have varying resting voltages as well.

You could try charging each battery individually with a 12V charger, to "equalize" the string.

You should put the cart on the charger whenever you are not riding it. Don't wait for a certain number of bars to show before you recharge. Does the charger shut-off automatically when it senses the pack is full? Serial ("string") chargers have no way of keeping the pack balanced, and if charged for too long, some batteries can get cooked while others are left undercharged, which reduces the total capacity of the pack and therefore your range.

I think e-doggies has the right idea for trouble shooting a battery problem but I would think if the problem has come back after replacing batteries I would be looking at something I have not changed, the charger. This assumes there are only 2 batteries in this cart. When changing batteries you should change all or none. If there are more than 2 batteries then I would change the remaining batteries and check the charger in this case.

e-doggies what you are saying, sounds pretty straight forward.
However I wish I could perform all of those battery tests on my day job.
I started putting the cart back on the charger when the turtle light would come back on.
I will try to put the cart back on the charger when I am not using it.
What you said makes a lot of sence to me, about the cart being charged for too long, this is quite possible.
Also it gets left on the charger over the whole weekend, hmmmm.
Unfortunately there is no one to give the responsibility of removing the charger.
I wonder if that's what cooked all of the batteries??

Good point, thanks e-doggies.
I will bring that up to the maintenance team at my work.

Hey Chas, there are definetly a full set of batteries on the golf cart, I do not know exactly how many there are,
since I do not do the maintenance work on it. Oh goody this is gonna be expensive to replace if that is the fact that we are looking at here.

e-doggies; I have been plugging in the charger to the cart whenever it's not in use.
Unfortunately the turtle light still shows up.
The turtle light continues to show up when one bar line drops (from the grid)and goes directly into slow mode, blah.

I think the company that I work for is going to have to replace all of the batteries.
I think what has been happening, is that, the juice gets over charged; because the charger gets left on the cart from Friday late evening until monday morning, every weekend. So that's why it probably wouldn't hold a proper charge. (over kill)

I did not do any extensive research (like you said I should) because it's not my golf cart to do so, and unfortunately there would be a liability risk involved if I did it myself.